Charles and Di's grim fairy-tale ending

The reason there has been so much delay in the royal divorce is that neither side could agree on what ceremony to use. Charles wanted a simple druid-driven divorce under green trees on a pesticide-free Welsh hillside, while Diana tended more towards a prime-time ritual on Panorama, but they have compromised on a brief ceremony in St Paul's cathedral officiated by the Archbishop of Canterbury, with exclusive rights shared between Hello! magazine and Resurgence.

To give you some idea of how it will be, I have been privileged to see a leaked copy of the draft ceremony, and am pleased to be able to bring it to you today ...

At the start of the fairy-tale royal divorce, the Prince and Princess shall approach the Archbishop, each accompanied by their advisers, solicitors, make-up artists, etc, and they shall stand reverently in front of him while he addresses them and the congregation.

Archbishop: Dearly beloved, without marriage it would be impossible to get divorced, therefore one leads to the other, and God does condone divorce after all. This is a very complicated matter and if you are still confused about it, send to Canterbury Cathedral for our factsheet enclosing lots of money and a stamped addressed envelope marked "Divorce", but the gist is that the Church has decreed that divorce is OK in certain circumstances, as follows:

1. When one of the partners is a direct descendant of Henry VIII who thought of the idea in the first place and was divorced twice to show how it works in practice;

2. When the mother of one of the partners is the Queen of England and asks me as Archbishop to get on with a divorce and not to hang around;

3. When media pressure is so intense in favour of a divorce that it is impossible to resist.

At this point the Prince's mobile phone shall ring and the Prince shall answer it.

Prince: Hello? Hi, Camilla! Lovely! But not a good time to talk, OK? No, it's not the phone playing up - there's an echo where I am. St Paul's. That's right. The cathedral. That's right - it's today - the Big D! Ring me later, Bunnykins, when I'm a free man. Toot toot.

The Prince shall then ring off and tell the Archbishop that it was a wrong number, at which the Princess shall look daggers at the Prince and the service shall continue.

Archbishop: Charles and Diana, 15 years ago I married you in this place into holy matrimony in the ceremony known as the fairy-tale wedding - well, it was not I personally, it was my predecessor, but we all look and sound the same in this ridiculous get-up - and at the time we all said it was a fairy-tale wedding, but since then we have looked more fully into the good book, that is to say, Grimm's Fairy Tales, and we have discovered that a fairy-tale wedding is far more likely to end in tears than happiness ever after, therefore are you two prepared to end this marriage in a fairy- tale divorce?

The unhappy pair: We are.

Archbishop: Let us give thanks at this time that this marriage has not ended in any of the other ways in which a fairy-tale wedding can come to grief, ie that there is no giant stalking the kingdom demanding tribute of seven maidens a year, plus all the corn he can get, and that the Prince's father, the Duke of Edinburgh, has not been remarried to a wicked stepmother, and that the Princess of Wales has not been turned by a magic spell into a little mouse, and that...

Prince: Oh, do get on with it! I am due at 3.30 to inspect deforestation problems in Somerset and it's a good couple of hours by helicopter!

Princess: Honestly, that's the last straw! You ruined our marriage because you always took more interest in your pedigree goats and your fruit juices than your family, and now you're trying to ruin our divorce as well!

Prince: May I just point out that if you had ever taken a half-way intelligent interest in the problems of the world...

At this point Dame Cilla Black shall step forward and address the cameras.

Dame Cilla Black: Well, Chuck, it doesn't sound as if you two have had a great time since we last saw you - I can't wait to have more of the gory details after the break!

More tomorrow, if you can face it.